KAZENGA

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One of my own.



Oliver Kazenga Professor Carleton Expository Writing

Portfolio 3

**The Incompatibility of Social and Individual Happiness in “Brave New World.”** Achieving happiness as an individual involves a simple and direct approach of dealing with the truth. On the hand, trying to fulfill other people’s happiness requires a more complicated approach. “Happiness is a hard master-particularly other people’s happiness.”(Huxley, 204) In “Brave New World”, a utopian novel by Aldous Huxley, two main characters Bernard Marx and John the Savage struggle to conform in a world, the World State, which has attained happiness and rejects any form of change. (note also that John is an outsider on the Reservation as well) The World State also rejects the need to acquire any other truth than its own. By the use of technology and “Soma,” a hallucinogenic drug, it does this by promoting social stability and by conditioning its citizens to circumvent facing the truth. The measures taken by the World State to make the society happy create a more stable and comfortable world but fail to acknowledge the short-lived happiness that individuals prefer. **This essay will analyze the objective truth that leads to the societal happiness in the World State as well as its effect on the subjective truth that is experienced by individuals, like John the Savage and Marx, to achieve happiness.** The World State focuses on improving the citizen’s quality of life and discourages the search of knowledge. Most individuals within the World State believe that improving one’s standard of living makes life more comfortable, which leads to a happier life; however others believe that one becomes happier by acquiring more knowledge. In “The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes,” the author, Lou Marinoff, explains how human unhappiness is caused by the extremism of various societies, which is evident in the World State’s notion that happiness is better than the truth. He discusses the ways to reduce suffering through personal fulfillment and social stability. These two methods of eradicating unhappiness contradict each other. Personal fulfillment leads to individual happiness while social stability leads to the happiness of an entire society. The personal fulfillment of the World State can be seen in its use of science to acquire truth while the social stability can be compared to its use of technology to control its citizens. (previous sentence unclear) Marinoff agrees with the World State notion that “science improves our understanding of the world beyond measure, and … technology enhances both quantity and quality of human life in numerous ways” (Marinoff, 474) but he collectively argues that science and technology has also disconnected our human relation with the world. This detachment, however, affects the individuals more than it affects the society. (see ch.18 for more on science that supports your point: " // Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science." // ) Although the World State discourages science and promotes technology, it is important to understand that the society still uses science to invent better technology for the society, but forbids science as a form of searching for the truth. The World State only allows the World Controllers, “the government officials,” to use science but prohibit their citizens to do so. In “Brave New World,” Mustapha Mond is presented as an intelligent scientist of the World State. He reads a paper written by another scientist titled “A New Theory of Biology” to determine whether the paper could be published. After reading the paper, he wrote the following across the title-page: “The author’s mathematical treatment of the conception of the purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. //Not to be published//.” (Huxley, 162) Mustapha Mond, who used to be an independent minded person, now censors new ideas for the reason of stability at the expense of individual expression. “Brave New World” argues that individual expression of the scientist would decondition the minds of others into making them believe that “the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness.” (Huxley, 162) Thus, one can infer that the World State has denied individual happiness to those who prefer to acquire more knowledge through science or human experience. The World State uses technology to control the society. For example, they use technology to control reproduction and for //hypnopaedic conditioning//. However they also use technology to create a happier world, such as in the use of //feelies// and advanced medicine. By benefiting the society, technology in turn benefits the individuals. Controlling reproduction breaks family ties that are usually valued by human beings but the //hypnopaedic conditioning// moulds the citizens of the World State to be happier without these bonds. Thus, in the World State, technology has managed to alleviate any suffering or cause that would make an individual unhappy. “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.”(Huxley, 198-9) Huxley is pointing out that the World State has managed to fulfill every individual’s need and want, in that, it would only be heretical to question the World State’s ways for preferring stability and happiness over truth. Although the World State managed to keep most of the individuals happy, it failed to satisfy everyone. The reason why a few individuals, such as John the Savage and Bernard Marx, felt dissatisfied with the system was because the World State Order was subjective in attempting to achieve happiness. Peter Warr examines the nature of happiness in his book, “Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness,” and explains that there are two aspects of happiness: the subjective and the objective happiness. One may argue that John the Savage and Bernard Marx possessed the subjective form but according to Warr the “subjective form of happiness include the experience of pleasure and pain … and being happy would then be described as a preponderance of positive feelings over negative ones.” (Warr, 9) This form of happiness is the same one promoted by the World State as they achieve happiness by trying to eradicate any form of suffering. Through technology, they got away with old age and if anything was to go wrong, there was soma to comfort the individuals in a time of stress. (Huxley, 198) The other form of happiness, which is objective, is characterized by features independent of a person’s feeling. One could be happy without experiencing positive feelings or personal enjoyment. In explaining the objective form of happiness, Warr quotes a philosopher, Parfit, who noted that the objective elements of a person’s happiness “might include moral goodness, rational activity, the development of one’s abilities, having children and being a good parent, knowledge, and the awareness of true beauty.” (Warr, 9) These are the exact elements that the World State has eradicated in the society due to fear of instability. (nice work integrating your research) Although happiness can be classified into different forms, as seen earlier, it is important to understand that there are still different notions of happiness. In “Analysis of Happiness,” Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz objectively presents various notions of happiness from different aspects of the world and analyzes different methods that have been used to achieve happiness. To describe the first notion of happiness, Tatarkiewicz refers to a scene in Huxley’s novel “//Anti Hay,//” where the protagonist asked his companion if she enjoyed a Mozart concert they just attended, “Enjoy isn’t the word; you enjoy eating ices. It made me happy. It’s unhappy music but it made me happy.” (Tatarkiewicz, 1)In this case, happiness was used to describe a moment. This happiness was an emotion since it was “a state that was intense but short-lived… in the purely psychological sense.” (Tatarkiewicz, 2) This is the notion of happiness that John the Savage and Bernard Marx struggled and fought for in the World State. The other notion of happiness which the World State promoted was happiness that “represents satisfaction with one’s existence as a whole and refers to life in general and not a single episode of pleasure.”(Tatarkiewicz, 2) This is why the World State emphasizes stability, rather than the mere thrill acquired from the enlargement of knowledge and refining of consciousness. Thus the incompatibility between social happiness and individual happiness in “Brave New World” did not simply arise as a result of the controlling nature of the World State but also because of the short-lived notion of happiness that individuals yearn for. In Brave New World, happiness is mostly subjective but the World State uses harsh measures-such as the eradication of science and the promotion of technology-to condition its citizens to accept its views. Objectively, the World State can be seen as a benevolent society that simply aimed for the wellness and happiness of every individual by creating a stable world. In “Brave New World”, the World State understood that in order to create a better world, certain human values had to be eradicated as they were not necessary in making individuals happy. The individuals, who valued short-lived forms of happiness, such as John the Savage and Bernard Marx, failed to understand the importance of stability over truth which was the “secret of happiness and virtue,” (Huxley, 26) according to “Brave New World.”

**Works Cited** Huxley, Aldous. //Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited//. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. Print. Marinoff, Lou, Ph.D. //The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes//. New York: Sterling, 2007. Print. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. //Analysis of Happiness//. Trans. Edward Rothert and Danuta Zielinskn. Warszawa: Polish Scientific, 1976. Print. Warr, Peter. //Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness//. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Print.

**Works Consulted** Layard, Richard. //Happiness: Lessons from a New Science//. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print. McMahon, Darrin M. //Happiness: A History//. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2006. Print. Panikkar, N Bhaskara. //Individual Morality and Social Happiness in Arthur Miller//. New Delhi: Milind, 1982. Print. Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. //Transforming Problems into Happiness//. Ed. Ailsa Cameron and Robina Courtin. Boston: Wisdom, 1993. Print. Spaemann, Robert. //Happiness and Benevolence//. Trans. Jeremiah Alberg, S.J. London: U of Notre Dame, 2000. Print. Summer, L W. //Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics//. New York: Oxford University, 1996. Print.

**Annotated Bibliography** Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. //Analysis of Happiness//. Trans. Edward Rothert and Danuta Zielinskn. Warszawa: Polish Scientific, 1976. Print. //Excellent source with very useful notes, bibliography and index. 356 pages.// This is a work on happiness by a Polish Philosopher, Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz. Instead of analyzing one particular method of attaining happiness, he presents everything that can objectively be said about happiness. Tatarkiewicz’s book deals with various aspects of happiness by using different perspectives such as psychological, practical, historical and ethical views. The early chapters, which were used for this essay, touch on the notion of happiness and the problems faced when determining the meaning of happiness. The later chapters point out the process towards attaining happiness and discuss the ethics when pursuing happiness. This book was very useful for the essay as it was written with a theoretical view which made it easy to relate it to Brave New World in explaining the effects of happiness within the World State.

Warr, Peter. //Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness//. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Print. //Very good source with useful notes, bibliography and index.548 pages.// This is a book by a researcher, Peter Warr, on happiness with an emphasis on the setting of a working environment. He analyzes why some people at work are happier than others by discussing the environmental and personal sources of happiness. This book was useful for this essay because the World State in Brave New World is set as a working environment. The book can be classified into two sections where it talks about the environmental and the personal views of measuring happiness. The environmental view can be compared to the World State’s view while the personal view can be compared to John the Savage and Bernard Marx’s views on measuring happiness.

Marinoff, Lou, Ph.D. //The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes//. New York: Sterling, 2007. Print. //Fair source with useful notes and bibliography.626 pages.// This is a book by a Canadian Philosopher, Lou Marinoff, on the ways to eliminate suffering and achieve a social balance in an extreme world. The book explains how a world with extremisms of various types such as the World State has led to the suffering of its citizens. Throughout the book, Marinoff refers to Aristotle, Bhudda and Confucius theories to finding a social balance and as a guide for human beings to achieving a personal fulfillment. This book was not used greatly in the essay as it had contradicting ideas with the other notions of happiness explained by other philosophical authors. The book was used to support the tension that exist between the ideas of happiness of the World State and that of John the Savage and Bernard Marx

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I got help to review and edit my work from Phillip Opsasnick, a Richmond senior majoring in English.

Oliver Kazenga Professor Carleton Expository Writing Portfolio III The incompatibility of social and individual happiness

“Happiness is a hard master-particularly other people’s happiness.”(Huxley, 204) Achieving happiness as an individual involves a simple and direct approach of dealing with the truth. In “Brave New World”, a utopian literature by Aldous Huxley, two main characters Bernard Marx and John the Savage struggle to conform in a world, the World State that has attained happiness and rejects any form of change. The World State also rejects the need to acquire any other truth than its own by promoting social stability and conditioning its citizens to circumvent facing the truth by the use of technology and soma, a hallucinogen drug. The measures taken by the World State to make the society happy create a more stable and comfortable world but fails to acknowledge the short-lived happiness preferred by the individuals. This essay will analyze the objective truth that leads to the society’s happiness and its effect on the subjective truth that is experienced by individuals like John the Savage and Marx to achieve happiness. The World State focuses on improving the quality of life and discourages the search of knowledge. Most individuals within the World State understand and are aware that improving ones standard of living makes life more comfortable and in turn leads to a happier life but some prefer and believe that the more knowledge acquired, the happier one would be. In “The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes,” the author Lou Marinoff, explains how human unhappiness is caused by the extremism of various societies such as the World State‘s notion that happiness is better than the truth. He discusses the ways to reduce suffering through personal fulfillment and social stability. These two methods of eradicating unhappiness contradict each other. Personal fulfillment leads to individual happiness while social stability leads to the happiness of an entire society. The personal fulfillment can be compared to the use of science to acquire truth while the social stability can be compared to the use of technology by the World State to control its society. Marinoff agrees with the World State notion that “science improves our understanding of the world beyond measure, and … technology enhances both quantity and quality of human life in numerous ways” (Marinoff, 474) but he collectively argues that science and technology has disconnected our human relation, not only with ourselves but also with nature. This detachment, however, affects the individuals more than it affects the society. Although the World State discourages science and promotes technology, it is important to understand that the society still uses science to invent better technology for the society but forbids science as a form of searching for the truth. The World State only allows the World Controllers, “the government official,” to use science but prohibit their citizens to do so. In Brave New World, Mustapha Mond is presented as an intelligent scientist of the World State. He reads a paper written by another scientist titled “A New Theory of Biology” so as to determined whether the paper could be published but after reading the paper, he wrote across the title-page: “The author’s mathematical treatment of the conception of the purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. //Not to be published//.”(Huxley, 162) Mustapha Mond used to be an independent minded person but due to the World State he censors new ideas for the reason of stability at the expense of individual expression. Brave New World argues that individual expression of the scientist would decondition the minds of others into making them believe that “the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness…” (Huxley, 162)Thus, one can infer that the World State has denied the individual happiness to those who prefer to acquire more knowledge through science or human experience. The World State uses technology to control the society for instance by controlling reproduction and the use of hypnopaedic condition but it has also used technology to create a happier world such as in the use of feelies and advanced medicine. By benefiting the society, technology in turn benefits the individuals. Controlling reproduction breaks family ties that are valued by the individuals but the hypnopaedic conditioning moulds the citizens into believing that these ties are a burden thus lessening their individual responsibility. In the World State, technology has managed to alleviate any suffering or cause that would make an individual unhappy. “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.”(Huxley, 198-9) Huxley is pointing out that the World State Order has managed to fulfill every individual’s need and want, in that, it would only be heretical to question the World State’s ways for preferring stability and happiness over truth. Although the World State Order managed to keep most of the individuals happy, the reason why a few individuals such as John the Savage and Bernard Marx felt dissatisfied with the system was because the World State Order was subjective in attempting to achieve happiness. Peter Warr, examines the nature of happiness in his book, “Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness,” and explains that there are two aspects of happiness; the subjective and the objective happiness. One may argue that John the Savage and Bernard Marx possessed the subjective form but according to Warr the “subjective form of happiness include the experience of pleasure and pain … and being happy would then be described as a preponderance of positive feelings over negative ones.” (Warr, 9) This form of happiness is the same one promoted by the World State as they achieve happiness by trying to eradicate any form of suffering. Through technology, they have gotten away with old age and if anything were to go wrong, there was soma to comfort the individuals in a time of stress. (Huxley, 198) The other form of happiness, which is objective, is characterized by features independent of a person’s feeling. One could be happy without experiencing either positive feelings or personal enjoyment. In explaining the objective form of happiness, Warr quotes a philosopher, Parfit, who noted that the objective elements of person’s happiness “might include moral goodness, rational activity, the development of one’s abilities, having children and being a good parent, knowledge, and the awareness of true beauty.” (Warr, 9) These are the exact elements that the World State has eradicated in the society due to the fear of instability. Although happiness can be classified into different forms as done earlier by Warr, it is important to understand that there are still different notions of happiness. In “Analysis of happiness,” Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz objectively presents various notions of happiness from different aspects of the world and analyzes different methods that have been used to achieve happiness. To describe the first notion of happiness, Tatarkiewicz refers to Huxley’s novel “Anti Hay” where the protagonist asked his companion whether she enjoyed a Mozart concert they just attended. “Enjoy isn’t the word; you enjoy eating ices. It made me happy. It’s unhappy music but it made me happy.” (Tatarkiewicz, 1) Happiness in this case was used to describe a moment. This happiness was an emotion since it was “a state that is intense but short-lived… in the purely psychological sense.” (Tatarkiewicz, 2) This is the notion of happiness that John the Savage and Bernard Marx struggled and fought for in Brave New World. The other notion of happiness which the World State promoted was happiness that “represents satisfaction with one’s existence as a whole and refers to life in general and not a single episode of pleasure.”(Tatarkiewicz, 2) This is why the World State emphasizes on stability than the mere thrill acquired from the enlargement of knowledge and refining of consciousness. Thus the incompatibility between social happiness and individual happiness in Brave New World did not just arise due to the controlling nature of the World State but also because of the short-lived notion of happiness specific individuals had.

Happiness is mostly subjective but the World State used harsh measures such as the eradication of science and the promotion of technology to condition its citizen to accept its views. Objectively the World State can be seen as a benevolent society that simply aimed for the wellness and happiness of every individual by creating a stable world. In Brave New World, the World State understood that in order to create a better world, certain human values had to be eradicated as they necessarily do not make an individual happy while it was those individuals such as John the Savage and Bernard Marx who valued the short-lived forms of happiness that failed to understand the importance of stability over truth which was the “secret of happiness and virtue.” (Huxley, 26)

= = Works Cited

Huxley, Aldous. //Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited//. New York: Harper Perrenial Modern Classics, 2005. Print. Marinoff, Lou, Ph.D. //The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes//. New York: Sterling, 2007. Print. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. //Analysis of Happiness//. Trans. Edward Rothert and Danuta Zielinskn. Warszawa: Polish Scientific, 1976. Print. Warr, Peter. //Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness//. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Print.

Works Consulted

Layard, Richard. //Happiness: Lessons from a New Science//. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print. McMahon, Darrin M. //Happiness: A History//. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2006. Print. Panikkar, N Bhaskara. //Individual Morality and Social Happiness in Arthur Miller//. New Delhi: Milind, 1982. Print. Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. //Transforming Problems into Happiness//. Ed. Ailsa Cameron and Robina Courtin. Boston: Wisdom, 1993. Print. Spaemann, Robert. //Happiness and Benevolence//. Trans. Jeremiah Alberg, S.J. London: U of Notre Dame, 2000. Print. Summer, L W. //Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics//. New York: Oxford University, 1996. Print.

Annotated Bibliography

Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. //Analysis of Happiness//. Trans. Edward Rothert and Danuta Zielinskn. Warszawa: Polish Scientific, 1976. Print. //Excellent source with very useful notes, bibliography and index. 356 pages.// This is a work on happiness by a Polish Philosopher, Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz. Instead of analyzing one particular method of attaining happiness, he presents everything that can objectively be said about happiness. Tatarkiewicz’s book deals with various aspects of happiness by using different perspectives such as psychological, practical, historical and ethical views. The early chapters, which were used for this essay, touch on the notion of happiness and the problems faced when determining the meaning of happiness. The later chapters point out the process towards attaining happiness and discuss the ethics when pursuing happiness. This book was very useful for the essay as it was written with a theoretical view which made it easy to relate it to Brave New World in explaining the effects of happiness within the World State.

Warr, Peter. //Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness//. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Print. //Very good source with useful notes, bibliography and index.548 pages.// This is a book by a researcher, Peter Warr, on happiness with an emphasis on the setting of a working environment. He analyzes why some people at work are happier than others by discussing the environmental and personal sources of happiness. This book was useful for this essay because the World State in Brave New World is set as a working environment. The book can be classified into two sections where it talks about the environmental and the personal views of measuring happiness. The environmental view can be compared to the World State’s view while the personal view can be compared to John the Savage and Bernard Marx’s views on measuring happiness.

Marinoff, Lou, Ph.D. //The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes//. New York: Sterling, 2007. Print. //Fair source with useful notes and bibliography.626 pages.// This is a book by a Canadian Philosopher, Lou Marinoff, on the ways to eliminate suffering and achieve a social balance in an extreme world. The book explains how a world with extremisms of various types such as the World State has led to the suffering of its citizens. Throughout the book, Marinoff refers to Aristotle, Bhudda and Confucius theories to finding a social balance and as a guide for human beings to achieving a personal fulfillment. This book was not used greatly in the essay as it had contradicting ideas with the other notions of happiness explained by other philosophical authors. The book was used to support the tension that exist between the ideas of happiness of the World State and that of John the Savage and Bernard Marx

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= =Brave New World =

superb!!

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 * Topic/Thesis: **

Individual happiness vs. Social happiness

The Brave New World has managed to create a happy and stable society for its community but in doing so, it had to sacrifice the individual happiness of its citizens. It is clear that what makes a society happy does not necessarily make the individuals in that society happy but the Brave New Worlds asserts that it is better to satisfy the social happiness than the individual happiness.


 *  Themes behind Happiness **

Stability Repression Welfare

**Brainstorming with Julie Stevenson**

Into the wild

 By the end of the book when Christopher was all alone, he realized that happiness cannot be achieved without sharing it with others.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Quotes from Brave New World

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapters 13 - 18

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, "My friends, my friends!" said the Voice so pathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gas masks, even the policemen's eyes were momentarily dimmed with tears, "what is the meaning of this? Why aren't you all being happy and good together? Happy and good," the Voice repeated. "At peace, at peace." It trembled, sank into a whisper and momentarily expired. "Oh, I do want you to be happy," it began, with a yearning earnestness. "I do so want you to be good! Please, please be good and …" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 15

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel–and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!" He laughed. "Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 16

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "And they're happy below the water line?" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example." He pointed. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "In spite of that awful work?" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True," he added, "they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them." Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. "And why don't we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes–because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 16

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Helmholtz laughed. "Then why aren't you on an island yourself?" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controller answered. "I was given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllers' Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. I chose this and let the science go." After a little silence, "Sometimes," he added, "I rather regret the science. Happiness is a hard master–particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 16

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 16

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "But I like the inconveniences." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> "I claim them all," said the Savage at last. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 17

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when he realized with a start that he was singing-singing! It was as though, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he had suddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault. Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; it was actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly remember–poor Linda, and his own murderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happily over his bow-stave, singing, actually singing. … <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Chapter 18

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Quotes from Brave New World

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapters 1 - 12

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue–liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapter 1

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The happiest times were when she told him about the Other Place. "And you really can go flying, whenever you like?"

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Whenever you like." And she would tell him about the lovely music that came out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, and the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see, and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses as high as mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else, and the boxes where you could see and hear what was happening at the other side of the world, and babies in lovely clean bottles–everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all–and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais, but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, every day. … <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapter 8

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power–this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. "A, B, C, Vitamin D," he sang to himself as he worked. "The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea." And Mitsima also sang–a song about killing a bear. They worked all day, and all day he was filled with an intense, absorbing happiness. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapter 8

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The other nodded. "But I mustn't tell you what." He was silent for a little; then, in a low voice, "Once," he went on, "I did something that none of the others did: I stood against a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus on the Cross."

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"What on earth for?"

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"I wanted to know what it was like being crucified. Hanging there in the sun …"

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"But why?"

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Why? Well …" He hesitated. "Because I felt I ought to. If Jesus could stand it. And then, if one has done something wrong … Besides, I was unhappy; that was another reason."

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness," said Bernard. But on second thoughts he decided that there was, after all, some sense in it. Better than taking soma … <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapter 8

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published." He underlined the words. "The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helena may become necessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose–well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes–make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapter 12

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the private paradise of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand of the electric clock above his bed jumped forward with an almost imperceptible click. Click, click, click, click … And it was morning. Bernard was back among the miseries of space and time. It was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across to his work at the Conditioning Centre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">To this deflated Bernard the Savage showed himself unexpectedly sympathetic.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, when Bernard had told him his plaintive story. "Do you remember when we first talked together? Outside the little house. You're like what you were then."

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Because I'm unhappy again; that's why."

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Chapter 12



<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Happiness (Talk with Marci Whitehead)

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Happiness as an individual - Pyschology

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> PsycINFO

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Happiness as a community - Sociology

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Sociological Abstracts <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Gale Virtual Reference

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Notes and ideas:

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Start broad then go narrow

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The use of drugs for condition such as the use of Ritalin to calm children/students so as to study better

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Welfare of an individual or community vs. happiness

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> `BNW a satire on America

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The thesis will support the ways the World State in the Brave New World have tried to achieved happiness. Also, how they have controlled truth and welfare to achieve happiness.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">General topics to consider for this thesis

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Science & its uses to achieve happiness <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Consumerism & Conditioning <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Drug use & motivation (for comfort)

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Bibliography

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Into the Wild <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Welfare, happiness and Ethics


 * Admirable New World**

This is the title of the Brave New World in Portuguese. The Brave New World must be the narrator's voice from Bernard's point of view while the Admirable New World must be from John Savage's point of view.




 * Annotated bibliography**

Sumner, L. W. __Welfare, happiness, and ethics__

Oxford. New York : Oxford University Press, 1996

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